Canadian natural food company SunOpta has entered an alliance with Specialized Protein Products (SPP) through its wholly-owned subsidiary SunOpta Africa. The deal will see SPP make and sell liquid and powdered soya ingredients and soya milk beverages in Africa and other international markets. The deal provides SunOpta with an increased supply of soya milk products and a logistics network to help it compete in world markets for natural and organic soya-based products.
The SPP facility, located in Potchefstroom, is a manufacturing facility with capacity of over 200 000 liters of concentrated soya milk per day and capable of producing 20 metric tons per day of soya milk powder. In a joint statement, Allan Routh, president of the SunOpta Grains & Foods Group and Peter Golbitz, director of international business development in the SunOpta Grains & Foods Group, said: ‘We believe this relationship will add value to the food and agricultural processing industry in South Africa and serve to improve quality and nutritional attributes of food products in the region.
‘In hand with this, the first-class infrastructure, lower production costs and enhanced reach that South Africa gives us for exports should help make these products competitive internationally and allow us to continue to grow our global foods business,’ they added.
The SunOpta Grains & Foods Group has started the sale of liquid and powdered products from the South African venture and expect sales to grow over time to in excess of US$15m.
